Audiophone for iOS 7 [1.0.1 released]

[DarthNerdus]

Hey everyone,

I'm extremely excited to announce that Audiophone for iOS version 1.0.1 is now available on the App Store. Here's a rundown of some of the improvements in our 1.0.1 release.

Subsonic domains actually work! Embarrassingly, our initial release contained quite a few bugs. The one I heard the most about was the inability to connect to Subsonic through the xyz.subsonic.org proxy system available to premium subscribers. Fortunately, the issue's been and took the opportunity to simplify the login screen at the same time!

Tag-based browsing. I heard from a number of users that the directory structure they use to store their music didn't align with ours. In retrospect, this was a pretty large oversight and resulted in a fairly useless app for those individuals. Well, I took the time to resolve the problem by implementing the system Audiophone intended to use from day one, but didn't quite make it to for 1.0 — tag-based navigation. Now, no matter how you organize your music on disc, you can enjoy the easy Artist/Album navigation Audiophone is optimized for.

Improved Stability. No software is without its share of bugs, but I worked hard to build Audiophone a strong foundation in 1.0.1. By taking the time to step back, look at how our actual users interact with the app (not the imaginary ones in our heads before launch), and rearchitecting our our backend and future plans to mirror our users' needs, I feel the app is in a great position moving forward.

There are doubtlessly more bugs to find and squash, but with a most of the necessary groundwork completed I'm focused on building the features you expect (and let us know about via feedback) like Offline Caching, Playlists, and more.

Thank you all for your support and feedback! Keep it coming!

[joost]

This would not be a good isub replacement if you stay with tagged based browsing instead of folder based

[ThisIsCraig]

Nice work on this, Jesse. It's nice to see a dev working on a Subsonic app that's enthusiastic about it. Most of the other iOS apps have been abandoned, and just didn't have much care or polish put into them. I've been using iSub for a long time, and it's been a good app, and, as a graphic designer who focuses on interface design, the last UI update was very welcomed. It's a bit of a bummer that it's no longer being developed, but hey, it happens.

Anyway, I grabbed Audiophone today and I'm gonna start trying it out. It looks nice so far. Straightforward and easy-to-use. Has a simple, clean design. Doesn't have much in the way of settings, but I know it's just a start and that you have a lot of ideas in the pipeline, so that's cool. One huge feature request off the bat is caching (which I see is on your list already, hah). I loved that about iSub. Being able to select a song/album to cache is a great feature. For example, I'll cache an album while I'm at home on Wi-Fi that I know I'll be listening to in the car, so that it's all ready to go when I need it.

Keep up the great work with this. I was starting to lose hope that anyone was putting any effort into making/maintaining a solid iOS app for Subsonic anymore, which seems crazy to me, as Subsonic is great. I'm looking forward to see what else is in store!

[DarthNerdus]

This would not be a good isub replacement if you stay with tagged based browsing instead of folder based

Thanks for the feedback. It's important to me that I hear what what Subsonic users (both Audiophone customers and not) are thinking about the project. That being said, I wanted to reply publicly to this and share some of my thoughts on this specific feature and the future of Audiophone overall.

First off, I wanted to comment about the "good isub replacement" bit. I should be clear that I am not trying to recreate iSub. I know this isn't what you said but I think it needs to be put out there. There are certainly features that iSub sports that I think Audiophone needs to include, but there's also features and design choices that I already know don't fit within my vision of Audiophone. Chat would be a great example of this.

I'm determined to make Audiophone one of the best Subsonic clients available for the iPhone, but it won't be the best fit for everyone. I'll always invite feedback about Audiophone and welcome insight on individuals will or won't use Audiophone, but my goal is to create the best application for those who find Audiophone fits their needs which means I won't be able to make it work for everyone.

Now, in response to the tagged-versus-folder browsing, why do you feel this is a show-stopper? I'd love to hear what use cases prevent tagged browsing from working for you.

Audiophone was designed to have a smooth and consistent experience when browsing collections. This goal led to a simplified design of Artist > Album browsing, because this ensures that album art can be displayed, albums can be listed together, and the hierarchy doesn't become arbitrarily deep. Since the application was designed around this navigation flow, it was built to expect the Artist / Album Name folder structure. Making this assumption was a huge mistake and I could have taken further steps to catch this during the beta phase by having a more diverse tester pool. (There were a number of poor assumptions that came to light after release that I should have caught earlier.)

When I looked into supporting different folder structures, it quickly became apparent that I can't make any assumptions about how music will be stored. Users could have folders setup like Music > Artist [A] > Aerosmith > 1974 > Get Your Wings, as an example. This would result in a opening the app to a list of ambiguous Artist folders (or worse, just a Music folder if that's how Subsonic was configured), and then it would take an additional tap or two to reach a song and additional taps if navigating to another Artist in another Letter category. Also, it would be necessary to open each folder of artists before Audiophone knew all of the artists available for search/filtering (local-based search, not remote which hasn't been added yet) and it's not possible to know if a directory is empty until it's opened. This problem can become exponentially worse depending on the way music is dumped into Subsonic's indexed directory. Tagged browsing removes the ambiguity of fetching Artists and Albums because when you look at the Beatles, it doesn't matter if you have the Beatles' albums in 12 different folders or dumped into one giant folder of every album in your collection.

This isn't to say that tagged-browsing is a silver bullet. Music may be poorly tagged or not tagged at all, the "Various Artists" is complicated, and if music is inconsistently tagged you can run into cases where Albums are listed but no songs contained within them (though I would venture this is a problem that should be mitigated at the Subsonic level). That being said, I think the benefits outweigh the cons and there are utilities available to help clean up hairy libraries (both from a tagged and folder-based perspective). I myself started using a great utility called beets a while back and it's made things so much easier and ensures my music collection is in tip-top form.

So obviously I'm fairly opinionated on this, but I'm not bold enough to make a blanket statement that Audiophone will never support folder-based browsing again. But if it does, I would like to know why you view it as a pivotal feature, what you'd gain from folder-based browsing for organizing music, and what your folder structure looks like. I'm interested in making sure the UI works as elegantly as possible and also managing the API calls efficiently, but if there's enough demand and I can provide the features people want in an elegant way, I'm willing to consider it.

Nice work on this, Jesse. [...] Doesn't have much in the way of settings, but I know it's just a start and that you have a lot of ideas in the pipeline, so that's cool.

Thanks for the encouraging words! Out of curiosity, what settings would you like to see brought into the application? (And yes, caching is quite obviously high on my list.)

[joost]

Thnx for the reply. Love the app so far. I have a large music collection with lots of underground music, not all properly tagged. The music is however stored in a correct folder
Structure. It woul be Nice to maintain the folder Structure and just use tags for additional info... Now the app is not usable for me, makes a mess showing the music. Re-tagging 150.000 songs is not my goal

Subsonic works best if you have a
Music dir/artists/albums/(cd1-2ed)/songs

Am i the only one using it in this way?

[DarthNerdus]

Structure. It woul be Nice to maintain the folder Structure and just use tags for additional info... Now the app is not usable for me, makes a mess showing the music. Re-tagging 150.000 songs is not my goal

Subsonic works best if you have a
Music dir/artists/albums/(cd1-2ed)/songs

Am i the only one using it in this way?

I myself organize music in a similar way (minus the CD1, CD2 level), but far from everyone does. The fact that you were able to use the application prior to this transition is evidence that you use a structure that fell within my original mental model.

My major issue with offering an option for folder-based browsing is that it wasn't done Right™. Even if I place a switch to just re-enable exactly what was there before without changing anything more, that's offering a half-baked feature. Unfortunately, it's not as easy as using the structure and using tags for additional information, because the two may be wildly mismatched (as you're seeing). You may have an album in a folder named "Test" that is tagged as "Testers", but because I can't make a request for "give me both" I can't utilize both. In essence, I either just follow the folder structure and say "Give me what's in this directory, period," or I ask, "Would you mind looking at your index and telling me what songs are by the Beatles?" There's a major difference between the two.

I'll continue mulling this around in my head. But keep the feedback coming, it helps me get a clearer picture of the reasons behind the request so I can try and architecture an elegant solution for the problem that may be better than just re-enabling the old way.

[Failed Engineer]

I registered to comment on Audiophone. I bought the 1.0 release (mostly just to support the development of a new iOS subsonic app) and didn't use it much because of playback bugs. It repeated every second song from any playlist so I went back to iSub.

I tried the 1.0.1 version and have to say this version is fantastic! The repeat song bug is gone, and the playlist is played back normally for the part.

I've been waiting for a proper tag based Subsonic browser, on any platform really, and Audiophone has truly nailed it! The handling of track artist and album artist is handled properly, at least for my use case. All my Various Artist albums are grouped within Various Artists, so I don't have track artists littering my artist tab, like iSub and other apps. Additionally, the app is slick! The UI is so simple and enjoyable to use!

My folder structure is music folder/Album Artist - Album, so only one folder deep. It works OK for subsonic, but I greatly prefer the tag based method Audiophone presents.

Issues:
1. Last.fm scrobbling doesn't work for me. I have subsonic setup to scrobble and iSub does it reliably, but no scrobbles from Audiophone.
2. Playback is mostly ok, but usually the fourth song of every playlist pauses momentarily (maybe 1-2 seconds) before resuming. Then at the end of paused song, I have to go and manually hit the fast forward button to go to the next track. The rest of the playlist then plays fine. Not that big of a deal.

Feature requests:
1. Cache management. I know the developer has made this high priority but wanted to mention it anyways.
2. Multi logins. I have multiple accounts set up to transcode differently (I use one for cellular streaming and another for wifi) and it would be nice to have them saved automatically. Also share subsonic amongst friends. I can use iSub but I greatly prefer Audiophone's browser.
3. Option to browse by artist from the genre tab in addition to populating and starting the genre playlist.
4. Browsing recently added albums and random albums.

Thanks for developing a new iOS app. Audiophone has started well, is already usable, and shows great promise! Kudos!

[gam3ra]

At first thanks for developing a new subsonic client. Haven't bought it yet but sure will test it soon.

Now, in response to the tagged-versus-folder browsing, why do you feel this is a show-stopper? I'd love to hear what use cases prevent tagged browsing from working for you.

Don't know if tagged browsing is a show-stopper for me but when I discovered subsonic I was glad to have a music server which let me browse by folders. All my libraries are tagged. And I have one for Music (224 Artist) and one for Audio-Dramas (226 Artists). I let iTunes handle the folder structure (2 different iTunes Librarys). And with subsonic it's real easy to switch them. So if I'm in the mood for some audio-drama I only see the dramas. An if I want a random playlist from all of my music, I'm sure I don't get some spoken word tracks in the mix.

Well, this is just my use case for folder based browsing and not necessarily how the majority uses subsonic

Like I said, I'm really excited that there's a 'new' subsonic client out there with a determined developer.

[airjrdn]

Like many others, I've been using iSub, but looking/waiting for a replacement since the developer got hired by Apple and let the best Subsonic iPhone app die a painful death. While I realize your goal isn't to build an iSub replacement, I think you'll find a significant portion of your potential userbase will come from there, so it may make sense to cater to that crowd a bit. Just a thought...

In any case, here are a couple more from a long time Subsonic, and subsequently, iSub user.

I have to mirror darth2499's thoughts on the following being requirements, especially for a $5 app.
- Playing Playlist (created on server)
- Creating Playlists (saving to server)
- Caching/accessing cached music
- Searching (not just the artist name)
- Folder based browsing

I think this would be nice, but not a requirement
- Recently Played, Frequently Played, Newest Albums
- Tag based browsing

I don't know what the maturity level is at this point, but in the beginning, there seemed to be a number of bugs (login issues, playback/repeat issues, etc.) based on posts in this forum. If you're still working on core features that most users would consider requirements in a 1.0 (or non-beta) level application, it might make sense to lower the price for the early adopters, and raise it to $5 when Audiophone is more feature complete. I realize iSub is no longer actively developed, but if you compare the feature list between the two, it would be a hard sell to convince someone that the prices should be the same.

I'll also throw my hat into the ring for requiring folder based browsing being a requirement. Note that I'm not suggesting you should have to derive artist/album/track/song/etc. from the folder structure. I do think there are times it makes sense to navigate that way though, especially if someone's music isn't 100% tagged. Mine actually is, but I still prefer navigating via artist->album->song.

Lastly...iOS 7 *only*? Ugh...I hate the looks of it. Personal preference, I know, but I still haven't convinced myself to update, and it's aggravating to say the least to stumble across a cool/promising app that requires it. Isn't that a bit like writing a Windows app and requiring Windows 8?

Anyway, I hope you take these thoughts in stride, and don't take them personally. From the looks of it, you've done a really good job and have some momentum and community attention. I hope Audiophone becomes the go-to app for Subsonic on the iPhone. Maybe it'll be the app to finally convince me to update.

Take care,

Bill

[daneren2005]

I'll just weigh in on the folder vs tags argument. In my mind browsing by tags makes most collections almost worthless. If you only have albums from a single artist it works the same except you don't have to worry about folder structure, so I can see why people want it. But throw in a single soundtrack and suddenly you not only have 10+ new artists that you don't want to be there, but you can't browse the entire soundtrack. There are plenty of times where I want to be able to browse mixes in the structure I ripped them to as well. This is one of the reasons why I chose Subsonic originally instead of some of the other cloud service programs, and why I will be sticking with Subsonic for the forseeable future. I'm not a iOS user, so this is just my 2 cents.

A couple of points on implementation:
1) It is possible to display both, while giving an option for the user to choose one or the other. It is definitely a pain in the butt and greatly increases the number of things to test because a lot of methods have a 1 or 2 depending on which you are using (ie: star, star2). But it is possible, and I have a working example of it with DSub.
2) You cannot do folder based access with browsing by tags. I asked Sindre if he would add it and he declined, so it probably will never be possible. This is losing out on a pretty major feature when using only tags.

[Failed Engineer]

But throw in a single soundtrack and suddenly you not only have 10+ new artists that you don't want to be there, but you can't browse the entire soundtrack

This is why there are album artist and track artist tags. As far as I can see, he is using the album artist tag. I have plenty of soundtracks in my library and I can view all of them perfectly in album format from my album artist tag (whether that is "Various Artist" or something else) in the Audiophone artist browser, without having the individual track artists in the artist list.

[jl55378008]

I've been a loyal iSub user for years, and I was pretty distraught when I saw that Ben wasn't going to be developing it anymore. I'm happy to see that there's a new dev taking Subsonic seriously in the iOS world.

The app is really sweet so far, for an early release especially. The interface is slick, and it seems to be functional. With regard to the tag/folder structure, here are my thoughts: Many users have large collections of music. Mine is over 1TB. I do try to keep my music tagged meticulously, but when you're talking about libraries with tens (or hundreds) of thousands of files, sometimes it's easier said than done. When I get new music, it goes into a temporary folder where it sits until I have the time to tag it and put it with the rest of my library. If I'm limited to searching by tags, any new music runs the risk of getting lost or being completely invisible until I spend the time to get it properly tagged.

That said, I can definitely see myself switching from iSub, but there are a few features that I'd need/want first:

1) Caching (obviously)
2) Skipping by time increment during playback (i.e. 10, 30, 60 seconds back/fwd)
3) Ability to filter by "folder" (as designated in Subsonic settings)
4) Bookmarking playback position

4a) It would be extra-nice if you could custom-set different skip durations for back/fwd (i.e. skip 10s back and 30s fwd). Instacast has this feature and it's awesome.

5) FLAC playback and/or on-the-fly transcoding

I'm definitely going to keep this app on my phone, and I'll keep a patient eye open for updates. With a few key tweaks, I think this app could be a clear winner over iSub. Thanks

[lovebags]

I echo many of the previous comments in that it's great to see a new iOS app and one that easy to use. However, not being able to browse or even see server playlists is a bit of a dealbreaker for us. We have an active userbase of about 1000 users and potentially 50,000 who can login to the service so hopefully those features get added and I can recommend our users check it out. Keep up the good work!

[DarthNerdus]

Thanks everyone for taking the time to discuss the application and what you'd like to see implemented/changed. I'll be responding to points chronologically since my last post, I may skip some if I feel my reply would simply be repetition.

Issues:
1. Last.fm scrobbling doesn't work for me. I have subsonic setup to scrobble and iSub does it reliably, but no scrobbles from Audiophone.
2. Playback is mostly ok, but usually the fourth song of every playlist pauses momentarily (maybe 1-2 seconds) before resuming. Then at the end of paused song, I have to go and manually hit the fast forward button to go to the next track. The rest of the playlist then plays fine. Not that big of a deal.

Feature requests:
1. Cache management. I know the developer has made this high priority but wanted to mention it anyways.
2. Multi logins. I have multiple accounts set up to transcode differently (I use one for cellular streaming and another for wifi) and it would be nice to have them saved automatically. Also share subsonic amongst friends. I can use iSub but I greatly prefer Audiophone's browser.
3. Option to browse by artist from the genre tab in addition to populating and starting the genre playlist.
4. Browsing recently added albums and random albums.

Thank you for the kind words. I'll look into the two bug reports herein, I was aware that Last.fm scrobbling needs work but this is the first report of the "4th song" bug, thanks.

Re: Feature requests. Caching is definitely on the way and you've highlighted the biggest hurdle so far: management. I'm trying to Get This Right™, but when it's ready you will all be the first to know. Multiple logins is certainly a possibility, this is the first request I've seen for it but I'll add it to the list. I've added your +1 for the addition of the "dynamic" lists Subsonic presents (recently added, random, hot, etc.).

When mentioning the Genre tab, you reminded me of an interesting point: Genres only works via tags. Even when the original release featured folder-based browsing, generating playlists (or retrieving artists/albums) based on genres relies entirely on the tagging information Subsonic reads from your music files. This was another reason on the pros/cons list for the transition, as implementing artist or album browsing based on genre tags while utilizing folder-based artist/album navigation could create a very disjointed experience. Albums could appear under slightly different (or entirely different, with compilations as an example) artists when browsing through genres.

While I realize your goal isn't to build an iSub replacement, I think you'll find a significant portion of your potential userbase will come from there, so it may make sense to cater to that crowd a bit. Just a thought...

[...]

I have to mirror darth2499's thoughts on the following being requirements, especially for a $5 app.
- Playing Playlist (created on server)
- Creating Playlists (saving to server)
- Caching/accessing cached music
- Searching (not just the artist name)
- Folder based browsing

I think this would be nice, but not a requirement
- Recently Played, Frequently Played, Newest Albums
- Tag based browsing

I don't know what the maturity level is at this point, but in the beginning, there seemed to be a number of bugs (login issues, playback/repeat issues, etc.) based on posts in this forum. If you're still working on core features that most users would consider requirements in a 1.0 (or non-beta) level application, it might make sense to lower the price for the early adopters, and raise it to $5 when Audiophone is more feature complete. I realize iSub is no longer actively developed, but if you compare the feature list between the two, it would be a hard sell to convince someone that the prices should be the same.

[...]

Lastly...iOS 7 *only*? Ugh...I hate the looks of it. Personal preference, I know, but I still haven't convinced myself to update, and it's aggravating to say the least to stumble across a cool/promising app that requires it. Isn't that a bit like writing a Windows app and requiring Windows 8?

Anyway, I hope you take these thoughts in stride, and don't take them personally. From the looks of it, you've done a really good job and have some momentum and community attention. I hope Audiophone becomes the go-to app for Subsonic on the iPhone. Maybe it'll be the app to finally convince me to update.

I will admit I had to take a step back in order to take these thoughts in stride, but I do greatly appreciate your honest opinion. There are a couple of things I will respond to here for the sake of transparency and so everyone can understand my intentions moving forward.

Re: iSub user base. I'm definitely aware that as Audiophone gains users, many of them will be iSub converts. This is simply a result of users searching for alternatives as iSub's development comes to an end. That being said, I will repeat that I am not making an iSub replacement. I have a clear vision for what I would like to see in a Subsonic app and I will work with those that share (at least a majority of) my vision to create the best experience possible. That being said, I already know that my application will not suit many iSub users. Tagged browsing is the obvious example of this, and while I may adjust my opinion on this I will certainly never (say never) make folder-based browsing the default. Another example of a feature that is very, very far off in the future (if it ever comes to be at all) would be a custom/licensed media backend that allows native FLAC and other off-the-beaten-path audio codecs and client-side EQ. This is low on my priority list because, in my mind, it's part of what makes the sausage. Subsonic offers excellent on-the-fly transcoding, which Audiophone will utilize when it streams. I had to actually go search my hard drive to find albums that are non-MP3 format for testing because everything just worked (and it allowed me to control bitrate output) with these options configured. The only reasons I can arguably see for this type of advanced playback capability is quality (I will avoid that tangential argument entirely) and ease of setup for users who aren't aware of Subsonic's transcoding options. Never say never, but my priorities are not to emulate the iSub feature set. I would rather have a smaller user base that shares my vision and enjoys the software I develop than have a (possibly much) larger user base that is looking for an experience that I won't be able to deliver to them (to the standard I feel I should) because I don't share it. While I'm on my probably controversial rant, I'll address the choice snippet of "especially for a $5 app". I have many, many opinions on app pricing and the App Store economy (as you may imagine), but let me summarize my thoughts on the Audiophone price tag: This is an investment. Many of you use your Subsonic app on a weekly if not daily basis. Subsonic apps that allow caching and other on-the-go features allow you to take your music collection places you never would be able to otherwise — especially when your collection exceeds your device's space limitations, so it definitely presents a value. Making judgements or requesting features based on the price of this application will generally require me to take a "step away" moment and won't win my heart over. I am a professional and you can trust that I will read and consider everything you say and it is on me to do so no matter the language, sentiment, or message conveyed — but in the end I'm a human being and I won't lie to you and say it doesn't have an effect on how I interpret things. Competing on price will ensure this application dwindles and dies. I have invested a lot of time because I care about this project and accept the fact that this may never pay for itself and definitely won't for a very, very long time, but in the end I could concretely say that if I charged $1-$2 and raised it with every point release, I would just stop now.

Furthermore, I have a very lenient refund policy. I understand that refunds on the App Store are Grade A bullsh*t. As such, if you are ever displeased with how the application performs or if it doesn't fit your expectations for a Subsonic app, please email me or submit a support request. I will PayPal you the money and you can keep the app. Maybe a future update will entice you to give it another spin, awesome. I'm not here to win everyone over or greedily hang onto the small fraction of your hard-earned paycheck, I'm here to create the application I wanted and try and provide an alternative in within this small market segment.

Whew. Now, your feature requests: Playlists are on the to-do list for sure (both local and server), caching has been answered ad infinitum, server-side searching is on the list, folder-based browsing is currently up in the air. Recently Played, Frequently Played, Newest Albums playlists are on the "high potential" list. I find it curious that you list both folder and tag based browsing. These are mutually exclusive for the most part. If this ever returned it would have to be a server-level setting that is either/or. This is part my hesitation because some features that I would like to develop and share can only be built off tag-based information and having a mismatch between your folder-setup and tagged-playback could be disorienting and problematic. Ex: You play a genre playlist and rediscover a great album in your playlist. Here's the snatch: it lists the Album Artist and Album Name, but you organized that into the Soundtracks/Jurassic Park Series folder... would you remember that off the top of your head?

The final bit thing I'll comment on from this one: iOS 7. Suffice to say that my response to your question would be that I would require Windows 8.1 (or 9 if it was announced and I knew it would be out by the time I was done) if building an app for Windows today. I will probably never support more than the current and previous OS versions and if there's enough "new" stuff to be beneficial, I'm not against requiring an OS upgrade for point releases in the future either.

All in all, thank you for the feedback. I don't want to come off as upset with you, Bill, but I did feel that I should put my feelings and opinions out there. With such a vibrant community around Subsonic, I have the benefit that many people will read these forums and what I write — I would rather have everyone know where I stand and what to expect from Audiophone, and from me, than purchase blindly. Thank you for prompting this and trust me when I say that I thought long and hard about what you said and your opinion on the application. I will never simply ignore feedback, but I won't promise that I'll agree. Thank you for taking the time to share your thoughts.

1) Caching (obviously)
2) Skipping by time increment during playback (i.e. 10, 30, 60 seconds back/fwd)
3) Ability to filter by "folder" (as designated in Subsonic settings)
4) Bookmarking playback position

4a) It would be extra-nice if you could custom-set different skip durations for back/fwd (i.e. skip 10s back and 30s fwd). Instacast has this feature and it's awesome.

5) FLAC playback and/or on-the-fly transcoding

Number 1: Ad infinitum. Number 2 is an interested prospect. It was recommend to me (and you'll likely see improvements in this area) of implementing easier forward/back navigation, but specific skipping intervals is a new one to me. Would you mind sharing your use case for a feature like this while listening to music? Number 3 is a definite "child" request of folder-based browsing. I obviously can't filter by a folder unless I'm browsing by folder. That being said, if the current position on folder navigation changes this would probably be a likely solution for users that have "Music", "Audiobooks" (which Audiophone will likely never be optimized for, as a heads up), etc. and want to focus on one root directly. Number 4 (the bookmarking part) is also of interest to me. Care to elaborate on your end goal with this one? Finally, I addressed number 5 above.

I echo many of the previous comments in that it's great to see a new iOS app and one that easy to use. However, not being able to browse or even see server playlists is a bit of a dealbreaker for us. We have an active userbase of about 1000 users and potentially 50,000 who can login to the service so hopefully those features get added and I can recommend our users check it out. Keep up the good work!

Playlists are on the way. There are other things first, but they're coming.

[airjrdn]

Hey DarthNerdus,

Thanks for the candid reply. I apologize if it caused you any undue stress, that was definitely not my intention.

I'll be keeping any eye on the feature progress, and may pull the trigger when I finally upgrade to iOS 7 or get a new phone with it.

Given the direction you're heading, would you mind suggesting what to put in the Album Artist tag on soundtracks/various artist compilations (greatest hits of the 80s, etc.) to get the best use out of Audiophone? Also, is there a specific delimiter that must be used to correctly list multi-artist tracks? Any thoughts on how best to store those? In other words, if I have a song by one artist featuring another, should both of those be in Artist and semicolon delimited, or how should those be handled so the songs can appear under both artists?

Thanks again, and sorry for any miscommunication.

Bill